Big Mozy Sale – Last Chance!

First off, don’t forget to subscribe to Mozy this month so that you can save 15%.  Use discount code JUNE15.  Less than $90 will buy you two years of unlimited backup and complete security.  All the files, photos, videos and music that you have on your computer will be completely protected from hard drive crashes or babies spilling milk on laptops.  The 15% sale, which doesn’t happen often, ends June 30.

Lightroom Presets

Next up, two presets I used for some of the shots I took at my photo session with a professional model.

A reader mentioned that she liked this style of vignette, so I wrote a tutorial on it last week.  There are two presets for you to download.  The first is the vignette only, and the second is the urban look combined with the vignette.

I don’t want to take credit for the creative idea behind the urban look.  It came straight from this book by Scott Kelby, which is a great purchase for anyone learning Lightroom.

And, as the book says, the preset is just a starting point.  You will probably need to adjust Saturation, if not some of your other settings, to suit the preset to the individual picture.  I also added some skin softening and eye adjustments using the adjustment brush.

Download these free Lightroom Presets here.  After unzipping them, load them into Lightroom by saving them somewhere on your hard drive.  (I recommend having a separate folder somewhere in My Documents to store all presets in – this will make upgrading Lightroom much easier.)  After saving the presets, right click on your preset palette in Lightroom, select Import and navigate to the folder where you saved those presets.  That’s it!

 Coming up next week – more info on the DPM contest to share $150 of my Clickin’ Moms earnings.  The contest has been extended throught July 31.  We just might do it!  Subscribe to Digital Photography For Moms via email or RSS so that you don’t miss it.

All Business Cards is offering 1,000 free business cards - the customer pays for shipping only. I’m sure shipping 1,000 cards isn’t cheap, but you do get the cards for free.

Wow, 1,000 playdates.  I don’t even think my 5 year old would be up for that. 

The card Anne designed is absolutely precious!  I love the colors!  Don’t you?

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We’ve been meeting new friends and reconnecting with old.  Have you ever tried to write your email address with a wriggly baby in one arm and an overflowing diaper bag on the other, while trying to wrangle a 5 year old at the same time?  It’s not easy, is it?  So I created a business card for Stay at Home Moms.

I got the idea for this project from the Script and Scribble cataglog.  I modified my project so that the card is the same size as a standard business card, making it easy to print and cut.  Perforated business card stock is available at office supply stores and you can download templates for the business cards from the stock manufacturer’s website.  The template I used was a Word document, so I created the card in Photoshop, then saved it as a JPEG and copied it into Word for printing purposes.

While I was at it, I made a card for boys as well as one in primary colors.  You can download the PSDs here, if you’d like to customize them in Photoshop for your own family.  They might also make good birthday or new baby presents.  Or even a Mother’s Day gift for your girlfriends?

You can use the template in either Photoshop or Photoshop Elements.

Some of you guys are excellent with graphics and I know you will have great ideas for really sprucing this card up.  I hope you want to share!

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I love blogging and participating in photography and Photoshop Elements forums because there is such a sense of community and helpfulness.  In the same spirit, PIF Photography does nothing except to pass along templates, textures, actions and tips.

Look at this beautiful Joy St. Claire texture I found last week on PIF Photography.  Now, this image is the low res, super small version.  So if you want to use it, you should head over to this post to download it.

How gorgeous is that?

The PIF Photo blog is so sophisticated and the info is fabulous.  It has earned a spot on my Best Resources page. 

By the way, thanks to Corinne for pointing out to me that I forgot to add a navigation link to that Best Resources page when I redid my blog.  So I put a link in the sidebar on the right.  I’ll get a real page button for it one of these days!

Have a good day!  And, if you haven’t already, subscribe to Digital Photography For Moms via email or RSS.

Backing up your images is, without a doubt, the most important thing you can do to them.  Believe me, I lost some wonderful pictures and don’t ever want to go through that again!

Mozy is running a 10% off sale during March on the annual and biennial unlimited backup packages. 

That’s less than $50 for unlimited backup for one year, or less than $95 for two years.  If you want to try it out before you buy, Mozy will give you 2 gigabytes of FREE backup space.

To get the discount, enter the promotional code MARCH into the referral box when you sign up.

Subscribe to Digital Photography For Moms so that you don’t miss any upcoming free actions or tutorials for Photoshop Elements!

1. Reading a Histogram
2. Lighting
3. Defog and Noise Reduction
4. Blemish Removal
5. Levels
6. The Most Important Workflow Step

And now, for step 7, it’s time to discuss running actions in Photoshop Elements.

Actions are a series of automated enhancements to an image.  They save time, create beautiful effects, and in some cases add functions to Photoshop Elements that are only available in the full Photoshop. 

Unfortunately, you can only create actions in the big Photoshop.  But lucky for us, we can run many of them in Elements.  If you find actions on the internet, always make sure that they are compatible with the type and version of software that you have.  For instance, some are compatible with PSE 6, but not PSE 5.  And many aren’t compatible with Photoshop Elements at all.

There are lots of free actions available for PSE.  So many that I haven’t found it necessary to spend much money on actions available for purchase.

Installing actions into your software can be easy or hard, depending on the version of Elements you have.  Installation instructions for PSE 4, 5, 6 & 7 on Vista and XP is here.

And as far as when to run the actions in your workflow, it really depends on the action.  For actions that add specific effects, like a color pop or B&W conversion, I generally run them after lighting corrections, defog and blemish removal.  Other actions, like those that sharpen or provide layer masks, are best run exactly when you think you need them.

Most of you know already that my absolute favorite actions are from CoffeeShop Free Actions.  I love them not only because they are free, but because they are huge time savers and are easy ways to take your pictures from run-of-the-mill to extra-ordinary.  And, watching how Rita’s actions work is a great way to learn about adjustment layers and layer masks in PSE.

Rita’s latest addition to the CoffeeShop menu is the Hot Cocoa 2 action, which adds a warm glow to your picture, with just a touch of a chocolate tint.  And just before that, she released the Perfect Portrait action.  This one is phenomenal!  For many photos, running this one is all the image needs. 

I have tutorials on this website for some of Rita’s fantastic actions.  They are long but helpful.  You only need to work through the entire tutorial if you haven’t had much experience with actions or image processing.  Otherwise, you can just look at the sections covering topics that you aren’t quite sure about.

• CoffeeShop Perfect Portrait Tutorial
• CoffeeShop Vivid 2 Tutorial
• CoffeeShop PowderRoom 2 Tutorial

Here are some other sources of free actions for Photoshop Elements.

• Grant’s Tools- includes a layer mask, Curves and Channels.  Many people think that these actions give you everything signficant that PSE is lacking as compared to Photoshop.
• Graficalicus- free actions and actions for sale.  Includes actions that give PSE full-blown Photoshop capabilities.
• VirtualPhotographer – free plug-in with lots of color and black & white actions to apply.  This one gets rave reviews!
• Panos FX – fun actions and effects for PSE, some free some for sale.  Includes effects like spiral binding or a puzzle look
• Elements+- About 145 free actions that “unlock” Elements to make it more like full Photoshop
• Shutterfreaks – this link goes to the PSE 7 free actions, but if you look around on their site, you can find free actions for all version of PSE.  There is a layer mask here, plus frames and a rule of thirds guide.

The last two installments in the Perfect Photoshop Elements tutorial (Vignettes and Sharpening) are coming soon!  Subscribe to Digital Photography For Moms so that you don’t miss them!

Erin

I had the honor of testing this action and writing a tutorial about it before Rita released it officially, so I’ve had a head start on playing with it.  It combines the best of some of her other actions, and adds a new trick or two.  Not only does it have all the portrait retouching layers like skin smooth, eye bright and eye define, it also has several color pop variations.

One great feature of this action is that nearly every layer has a layer mask.  The flexibility that these layer masks bring makes for pictures with just the right amount of Photoshopping, but not that overdone look.

And don’t let those layer masks scare you off if you’re not comfortable with them yet.  This tutorial will help with the masks in particular as well as running the action in general.

Rita has also created some beautiful textures this week.  I can not wait to try these out.  Have any of you used them yet?  I hope my husband is planning on spending his weekend looking after the kids, because I have photography plans!

Take care,

Erin

This action has the following 4 color pop options:

• Soft
• Vivid
• Urban
• Bright

And, unlike the earlier version of Vivid, this one has  layer masks so that you can moderate the color pop effect on skin

In addition, there is a fabulous vignette, that, in my opinion, is the be-all end-all of vignetting.  You don’t have to use a brush or draw a rectangle.  It works automatically! 

Are you new to actions?  Need a layer mask refresher course?  I wrote a tutorial to accompany CoffeeShop Vivid 2.  And I’m here to help if you have questions!

Erin

This is what I’ve done over the past week:

• Played with new Tinker Toys and Tinkerbells
• Survived a 15 hour day in airplanes and airports on a trip that was only supposed to last 5 hours

This, on the other hand, is what Rita has done:

• Released her Color Pop 2 Free Action for Photoshop Elements
• Created an Attic Vintage Free Action – (this one is way cool)
• Written a tutorial on creating Grunge Effects with Texture

Talk about smart, productive and creative!  I’m looking forward to some Photoshopping time so that I can play with Rita’s newest releases and recover from our holiday!

I hope everyone had a good one!

Erin

How many times have I mentioned CoffeeShop Photographyas a great source of free actions geared at Photoshop Elements users?  A million, right?

Just a handful of other designers provide actions for Photoshop Elements users.  Many of these actions, like layer masks, enhance PSE’s functions to make it more like Photoshop itself.  Others transform your photo into a Rubik’s Cube or make a sunny day rainy.  My latest post over at Blissfully Domestic covers a few of my favorites.  Check it out!

And for today’s entry in the Photoshop Elements/Premiere Elements giveaway, tell us in the comments below if you have a favorite source of free PhotoshopElements actions.  The drawing for the contest will be Monday, December 22 and you can enter once on every post I’ve made during the month of December.

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